I just got back from a short trip to Indonesia – where I learnt many interesting things. The most interesting learning for me was that Indonesia has 250 radiologists for its population of 250 million – radiologists are literally therefore one in a million! There are many other parallels with India. Of course geographically both are large countries with similar infrastructural challenges and issues, although as I saw it the public-private partnership model works well in Indonesia, with excellent highway infrastructure. However the volumes of traffic are so huge as to overwhelm even these – one of the highlights of my trip was a helicopter ride which was necessary in order to reduce the time for one particular commute from 3 hours to 10 minutes (left me thinking about how this could really improve lifestyles in Bangalore as well!). The hospitals I visited were state of the art, with excellent imaging equipment and infrastructure. The challenge though is manpower, which translates into quality and staffing issues. A situation ripe for the effective deployment of Teleradiology, and telemedicine in general.